If he was going to go on his very first shopping trip in this Cycle, it would probably be wise to have some food in his stomach. Eresthanon’s stomach wasn’t rumbling — he was an elf, after all — but he had a mighty hankering to fill it nonetheless. What, precisely, he had a hankering for was less clear, so he decided to walk around the neighborhood for a while before he’d go back to his car.
After meandering for a few blocks, Eresthanon found himself standing across the street from the rear of the Federal Reserve Bank. The building was unmistakable, with its large sandstone and limestone bricks. The stones were rusticated and pulvinated, their rounded, puffy edges giving them an air of well-weathered sturdiness. Oddly, the façade reminded the elf of the foil packaging some gums came in these days, though the building was much older.
Looking at one of the most famous gold depositories in the world, Eresthanon was reminded of humanity’s obsession with precious metals. It was something of a mystery to the elf. Unlike the Creaturae — who made coinage based on the ratio of aetherite each could be alloyed with — for most of their history humans had almost no practical use for precious metals. An argument could be made about the value of rarity, purity, and density, but enough to justify the steadfast refusal to find something superior to useless lumps of metal?
The bank wasn’t what caught Eresthanon’s attention. Catty-corner to the rear of the Reserve was the entrance to a building done in a Classical style. He had initially taken note of the building because the spaces between the first three floors were trimmed with stone lion’s heads.
It reminded him of the Ebabbar in the ancient city of Sippar. Also known as the Shining Temple, it had been adorned by a much larger lion’s head carved in relief on the stone of the building. The temple had been dedicated to Shamash — the same Shamash whose Seal adorned the tablet he’d sworn his oaths to the Vigiles on earlier that day.
Then he had noticed something far more relevant to his immediate needs. A large sign covered most of the rear wall of the foyer, advertising something that he felt certain would satisfy his current craving — a sushi restaurant.
Perhaps craving was the wrong word. Eresthanon had no idea if he would love or hate sushi, as he had no memories of ever eating it, but the chance to experience that discovery appealed to him in a fundamental way. Learning about himself could be just as satisfying as a food that perfectly matched his mood.
Although the restaurant was busy, it wasn’t so packed that Eresthanon couldn’t get a seat. He looked over the menu with no idea what might match his tastes. He was in luck; the restaurant offered several chef’s choice platters.
One was meant to serve up to four people and Eresthanon nearly ordered it. While such a variety was appealing, he realized that would be far too much food, especially with the added risk that Eresthanon might not care for this style of seafood. Or seafood at all! They had smaller platters, as well, and he settled on a sizable one that provided samples of both sushi and sashimi.
It was exciting, in a new Cycle, to explore which foods would resonate with his palate. Sushi, he soon learned, was good (but not amazing), suited his taste buds better than sashimi, and was best with a bit of spice.
The time it took to order and eat provided a good opportunity for Eresthanon to use his phone to make sure all his practical needs were attended to. He had several hundred dollars in cash in his wallet, but if he was going clothes shopping he needed to be certain his charge accounts were activated. That meant setting up a pin for his debit card, double-checking and memorizing his billing zip code for the credit cards, and making sure he had smart pay apps sorted out. Cash was still king in New York City, but Eresthanon wanted to make sure all his bases were covered.
His accounts suggested he had a significant amount of mundane personal wealth. That lent credence to something he’d noticed on his driver’s license when he first examined his identification documents — Eric Nathanial, his mundane identity, was rich. Not just a little rich, either, but Manhattan rich. His home address was on Gramercy Park West, a tiny, opulent street in a tiny, opulent neighborhood surrounded by other, similarly-opulent neighborhoods, including Kips Bay, the East Village, and the Flatiron. It was so posh and exclusive, residents had personal access to one of only three private parks in the entire state.
He also needed to remember to get some kind of dimensional storage and coinage — very few Creaturae dealt in mundane currency — but that would have to wait until tomorrow, at the earliest.
Nothing he’d seen on his phone or in his documents indicated how much coin he had, if any.
The only non-mundane app he’d installed for himself before this Cycle began was the magic-integrated security. He’d have to pay a visit to a proper bank to find out more. Despite the breadth of knowledge he’d discovered he had about New York so far, he hadn’t the slightest idea where he might find a bank; or any other Creaturae-specific merchants, for that matter. It was an odd gap in his knowledge and one his instinct was to explore, but tradition held that it was best not to think too deeply on past Cycles.
The evening was pressing onwards and he had a meeting with Aaliyah’s contact to prepare for, so he would have to put off the search for coinage to another time.
His partner had suggested searching for goth boutiques to acquire an outfit for the evening. Eresthanon wasn’t sure what that meant, in fashion terms, but he imagined it had to be related to the architectural and artistic movements rather than the gutþiuda, the Germanic tribes abused by Rome and subsequently maligned by history. If his conclusion was accurate, he pictured a style that was dark, drastic, and formal, likely with unnecessary, complicated designs and accessories. Her comments about the Victorian aesthetic and fascination with the macabre supported that conclusion, as well.
An internet search yielded promising results — there seemed to be a hotspot of the needed boutiques between the Vigiles building and Midtown, with stores in NoHo, the East Village, and Union Square. He’d have to find parking somewhere between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, but that would give him a good central location to visit the various boutiques and drop off any purchases in between stores.
It also put him close enough to Gramercy Park that he could check out his new home, assuming Aaliyah hadn’t called him to the meeting yet. If she did, he’d be in a good position to reach anywhere in the city fairly quickly. Luckily, he found a small parking garage on East 9th between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, the perfect spot to visit each of the three different boutiques he’d decided to visit with just a few minutes of walking.
Each store had its own charm, catering not just to a general fashion style but to a wide array subcategories within it, as well. These diverse varieties ranged from unkempt homeless person to something that resembled a high-ranking military officer of a small but extravagant mountainous nation where the sun never rose. Where the stores shared the most common ground was in staffing.
At each boutique, Eresthanon was assisted by a different young woman. All three were almost obscenely exuberant about helping him get together an outfit. The fact he had relatively little to go on in terms of what he actually needed didn’t dampen their spirits in the slightest.
Although the ladies were probably motivated by the possibility of lucrative sales, at least to some degree, the overall experience left Eresthanon feeling more like a doll in the hands of an excited child than a mark being manhandled by a shrewd merchant. In the end, he managed to put together an ensemble that was supposed to let him blend into any situation where goth was de rigueur without standing out too much.
Eresthanon thought he would stand out anywhere that wasn’t a military parade put on in a banana republic run by a vampiric dictator, but the shopgirls were adamant his outfit was tasteful — even understated — by goth standards.
The outfit itself consisted of a brocade vest over a tight blouse, with a frilled cravat and a tailcoat. The coat had a generic military design that was downright anachronistic, like the dress uniform of some Prussian officer yet to don their aiguillette, epaulettes, or sash. Heavy, combat-style boots had been a must, although he wasn’t sure militaries still issued pairs that reached the knee. To complete the look, he had been talked into buying a low, belled top hat.
Other than the white shirt, everything was black, and there was a surfeit of straps, belts, and chains attached to many of the pieces that served no obvious purpose. One of the clerks had insisted they added ‘personality.’ She had argued more strenuously than the others that he needed more of this so-called personality, but Eresthanon had drawn the line when she began trying to sell him on a variety of goggles and other accessories shaped like coffins, bats, spiders, and skulls.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
By the time he had everything in hand and reached the address of his new home on Gramercy Park West, it was after nine o’clock. There was only street parking near his apartment, but Eresthanon found a spot right in front of his building. He didn’t need to be an elf to be fairly confident the space had been magicked so it would always be available for him; he also didn’t have the time to investigate the specific nature of the enchantment. What he could be certain of, however, was that he’d been very thorough in his previous Cycle to prepare for this one.
The building itself was distantly familiar to Eresthanon. He knew a lot of things about this house — like how the lampposts on either side of the wrought iron gate had been installed to signify it was the Mayor’s residence more than a hundred years earlier — but it all registered in a distant, detached way, like trivia you might pick up from reading an encyclopedia. He brushed those thoughts aside as he entered the floor on the garden level; it was best not to dwell too long on how you might know things in a new Cycle.
He went through the gate and entered the building from the garden — or street — level, under the broad front stairs. His apartment was at least two storeys judging from the staircase on the right side of the foyer. A small nook beyond the staircase held a washer and dryer and Eresthanon lamented that he wouldn’t have time to wash his new outfit.
Aaliyah hadn’t given him a specific time frame for the meeting beyond telling him it would be “in a few hours;” she could contact him any minute or it could still be hours away. In either case, he didn’t want to risk laundering his new clothes and wind up needing to use magic to dry them — soap would still be clinging to the fabric and that could be uncomfortable — so he had to prepare everything now and wait.
A quick exploration of the home revealed it was just as he had expected from the seeing address earlier: conspicuously luxurious. The floors were hardwood parquet, ornate chandeliers hung from the ceilings, and fireplaces stood in several rooms. The rear opened into a private, walled yard which was overlooked by a balcony on the parlor floor above.
Aside from brand new major appliances, there was almost no other furniture. A few rooms had very basic, utilitarian pieces, like beds in the bedrooms or a plain table with dull chairs in the dining room. The place felt incomplete. Eresthanon was going to have to find time to deal with that, otherwise he’d probably avoid spending time in his own home. It had a hollow, soulless feeling to it due to the sparseness.
That was, again, an issue for a later date; he had more pressing matters to attend to. After he’d dressed, Eresthanon looked himself over in a mirror in one of the bathrooms. The completed ensemble was, in Eresthanon’s opinion, laughably anachronistic and bordering on the absurd. He could only trust that Aaliyah knew what she was about; he certainly didn’t know enough about the criminal underworld or the world of contemporary fashion to have an informed opinion.
The problem with this so-called gothic style, in the elf’s opinion, wasn’t the clothes themselves. Eresthanon actually thought the style could be rather fetching, even if it was somewhat ostentatious. What bothered him was that it was the sort of getup a burgeoning magi would adopt if they really, really, really wanted to impress upon anyone who saw them that they were delving into necromancy or hellcraft. It didn’t express who the individual was, but how they wanted others to see them.
Eresthanon spent a few minutes having a fierce-but-silent argument with himself as he looked in the mirror. The girl at the boutique had been right — some jewelry would provide a nice accent to all the black clothing — but he really didn’t want to admit it. Every accessory she’d shown him had been ludicrously ornate and he thought the clothes needed the contrast of something that was understated and simple but still caught the light. He stood by his conviction that goggles would have been ridiculous.
His phone buzzed on the counter; it was a text from Aaliyah. She wanted him to meet her in the Meatpacking District at ten o’clock and provided an address. That gave him half an hour to make a ten minute drive, assuming traffic didn’t turn into a snarl. He sent back an acknowledgement and returned to his car. He was, in that moment, extremely grateful for his car and the magically-eased parking situation. He didn’t think he would have enjoyed riding the train dressed as he was.
The elf was no shaman, so he made no offerings or invocations to the often capricious, sometimes pernicious spirits of chaos and misery that influenced the traffic in New York City. He was fortunate and didn’t attract their attention or ire, making it across the island from Gramercy to the Meatpacking District in a quarter of an hour.
Very little of the businesses in the Meatpacking District still conducted the business of packing meat; much of the real estate had been given over to designer clothing stores and nightclubs. The address Aaliyah had given him was an exception — it was a parking lot situated between several plants and warehouses that obviously still conducted the traditional business of the neighborhood.
Aaliyah was leaning against a large motorcycle when Eresthanon pulled into the lot. She hadn’t bothered to change her clothes except to add a simple leather overcoat that hung down to her hips.
That was… it was something.
He’d clearly been good and bamboozled by his new partner. Eresthanon considered trying to craft an illusion on the fly to modify his clothes, but that kind of enchantment didn’t appear to be in his wheelhouse and that meant it was a good way to wind up with one leg shorter than the other. That left him pretty well screwed and stuck with his garish costume. The best he could do was try to own it.
He stepped out of his car, the tails of his flamboyant coat swishing around his legs, and set a top hat dark as a winter’s tomb on his head. Aaliyah had to brace herself against the motorcycle to stop from falling over as she was wracked with silent laughter.
“You- you- you should have got a sword cane and a monocle!” she wheezed. “How much did that end up costing you?”
“A thousand dollars, give or take,” he replied drily. “I’ll treat it as the cost of learning that you consider yourself something of a prankster. Perhaps I can view it as an initial investment in my revenge.”
“Yeah no, this will actually help you blend in where we’re going. I just, I can’t say I expected you to take my advice so literally,” she said, still chuckling.
“The clerks at the shops I visited were quite enthusiastic in helping me put together this ensemble. If they’d had their way, I’d be wearing three to five pounds of silver-plated pewter, as well.”
“Goths do love their accessories,” Aaliyah said, turning to walk towards a pair of warehouses further into the parking lot.
She led Eresthanon to an alley in the industrial complex and stopped at a plain, steel security door. She knocked twice, slowly, then again in a rapid pairing of staccato knocks, and ended with a single knock. The whole thing had a rhythmic quality, but it was no song Eresthanon knew.
A panel in the door slid open and Eresthanon couldn’t help but reflect, once more, on how trite Creaturae could be.
Part of it was tradition — praeternatural races and organizations had been doing the secret club thing long before there was a popular culture to run these tropes into the ground; arguably, in some cases, before there was even a regular culture. The other part was ego — many Creaturae exulted in trappings that made them seem mysterious and otherworldly. There were more than a few notable personalities through the ages who had created spells and enchantments that did nothing more than enhance ambiance nor would there ever be a shortage of wizard towers perpetually shrouded in a strange, ominous, and (generally) pointless mist.
Not counting the wholly separate and fairly insular races — of which the elves were only one — most informed estimates placed the number of Creaturae in the world between one half of one percent and two percent of the human population. Even being a part of that very exclusive number wasn’t rare and special enough for some, so they had to set themselves apart even further with gimmicks and nonsense.
Some argued that the psychological aspects of magic were at least suggestive, if not proof, that magic itself played a direct role in altering the personalities of those attuned to it. Why that would specifically create a bunch of preening narcissists no one could say.
Whatever the case, Eresthanon found the two eyes peering at him from the darkness behind the hidden sliding panel mildly amusing and nothing more. Aaliyah took it in stride, as well, because she uttered a passphrase — “Ciao, bella” — without a hint of irony.
The panel slid shut with a dull clang and the door opened. Behind it was a small, dark room.
The walls were covered in graffiti that glowed under ultraviolet light coming from purple fluorescent tubes along the ceiling. One wall was free of this pell-mell graffiti, however, and was instead decorated with a fanged skull done in spray paint. The frontal bone, where the forehead would be if there were flesh, was adorned with an ancient symbol painted in a light silver that nearly matched the white of the skull.
The symbol was an ankh with a scarab beetle set into the loop at the top.
Eresthanon didn’t roll his eyes or sigh, but he winced inwardly when he realized how he’d overlooked the obvious. A get-up like the one he was wearing and a meeting in the Meatpacking District, who else could they be meeting other than vampires?
Awesome.